23 September 2016 6:00 PM

Saturday PS: Remembrance of inflation past

THIS week, I took a trip down Memory Lane.

A piece of client work required scrutiny of a set of inflation figures.

So what? Presumably I was knocking out a report on the desperate efforts of central banks – our own, the Federal Reserve Board, the European Central Bank and so on – to breathe life into inflation rates close to expiry?

Ah, no. You see, I was studying the Consumer Price Index of the Republic of South Africa, currently running at an annual rate of 5.9 per cent in the year to August. That’s a chunky number compared with those for the US, UK and euro-zone – respectively 1.1 per cent, 0.6 per cent and 0.2 per cent.

More striking still is that the South African rate is on the way down, not up. In the year to July it was six per cent and in the year to June it was running at 6.3 per cent.

The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) has set a target range of three per cent to six per cent, so the July and August figures were just inside this goal-mouth. And “just inside” is about the best that the inflation numbers have been able to achieve in recent years, quite often ending up outside.

According to the official agency Statistics South Africa, the average rate was 5.6 per cent in 2012, 5.7 per cent in 2013, 6.1 per cent in 2014 and 4.6 per cent in 2015.

In June 2013, the then Governor of the SARB Gill Marcus complained: “[W]e do not see the upper end of the target range as being the inflation target.”

To recap, there is somewhere in the world where central-bank officials are trying to reduce inflation, not to encourage it, and where the SARB this month said: “Inflation is expected to average 6.4 per cent in 2016 and 5.8 per cent in 2017, compared with 6.6 per cent and six per cent [forecast] previously. The forecast for 2018 is unchanged at an average of 5.5 per cent.”

Not much sign there of a move away from the upper end of the target range.

This is all terribly nostalgia-inducing for those of us of a certain age who can recall central bankers in this country, in Europe and the US grappling with the seemingly-intractable problem of inflation rates that dwarfed not only those of today but even those endured by contemporary South Africans. Indeed, six-odd per cent inflation in the UK would have been greeted with relief during the 12 years, 1970 through 1981, during which it was above this level.

Never say never again

ALL of which goes to show that the question “can you turn the clock back?” should usually be answered in the affirmative. It came up this week in conversation with a publisher about possible future projects – talk had turned to how the eventual post-crash economic architecture may look, with reference to possible curbs on trade, capital movements and other features from the pre-Eighties era.

In my lifetime, I said, there have been at least two economic-policy structures about which it was said the clock could not be turned back. The first involved full employment, strong trade unions and an active role for the government in the economy.

The second, now on its last legs, involved free trade, privatisation, independent central banks and “flexible” labour markets.

Clocks can always be turned back. Try it sometime.

A weekend miscellany

GOOD riddance to the Liberal Democrat conference and its leader Tim Farron’s demands for a referendum on the terms of Brexit, “with an option to remain in the EU”. This, of course, would give the Remain camp two chances against the Leave camp’s one.

Happily, Sir Vince Cable slapped down this idiotic idea. I always liked the former Business Secretary, especially as he invited me to a book launch some years ago.

Also good riddance to Owen Smith, the Labour leadership contender who, a la Farron, wants to overturn the popular vote. He is widely expected to be trounced by Jeremy Corbyn when the results are unveiled later this weekend.

If I have this wrong, I shan’t be able to correct it – for some reason my home computer won’t let me on to the Typepad system. Were I conspiracy-minded, my eyeballs would revolve as I ranted about MI5 and the Freemasons, but I think it’s simply that our connection is a bit rubbish.

Last week’s round-up of curmudgeonly TV police chiefs who are eventually reconciled to their star detectives unaccountably left off the youthful Sergeant Morse’s (Shaun Evans) boss in Endeavour, Chief Superintendent Bright, played by Anton Lesser.

I was delighted to hear Lesser on Farming Today on Thursday morning, not holding forth on agricultural subsidies or the woefully low price of milk but reading Digging by Edward Thomas. The programme’s editors judged the poem described perfectly the onset of autumn and they were right.

In the latest edition of The Spectator, published today, Charles Moore noted that Hillary Clinton’s dismissal of half of Donald Trump’s supporters as a “basket of deplorables” could backfire in the same way as the Kaiser’s description of the initial British force in the Great War as contemptible and Aneurin Bevan’s “lower than vermin” jibe at the Tories – in both cases the victims “took up the insult as a badge of pride”.

Literally a badge in the case of the Ulster Unionists who, in the aftermath of the 1974 general strike in the province, were accused by Prime Minister Harold Wilson of “sponging” off mainland taxpayers. Little pieces of sponge duly appeared in their lapels.

Meanwhile, the London Evening Standard inadvertently produced a gleaming gem of an example of what Private Eye would call “how journalism works”. In its coverage Wednesday of the interminable Angelina/Brad divorce, it began one sentence: “The website quoted sources which denied reports…” That’s pretty subjunctive, and takes to a whole new plane the news editor’s traditional admonition to any reporter writing anything remotely contentious: “Stick a few ‘allegedlies’ in there, laddie.”

Finally, on the same non-subject, there was a brilliant spoof by Bryony Gordon on the front of The Daily Telegraph on Wednesday morning headed: “The split second when nothing else mattered”, with the “story” about the divorce disclosure including the priceless line: “[A]mid the hurly-burly of the past decade, there has always been one constant: Brad and Angelina. Brangelina. 2004 - 2016, RIP.”